


Prelude

by bluemoodblue



Series: Broken Tattoo [1]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Character Death, Family, Gen, Kravitz Week 2019, day one: kravitz's past / old family, how Kravitz became a reaper, it's fine tho, kravitz's past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-12
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-10-26 22:03:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17754296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluemoodblue/pseuds/bluemoodblue
Summary: He would have played for the world, would have lead orchestras and made people listen to him and his music. He knew from childhood what he was destined for.Only Lorelei was more important than music.Kravitz Week, day one: Kravitz's Past / Old Family





	Prelude

**Author's Note:**

> This one is based on/an expansion of a little thing I wrote about what tattoos Kravitz might have.

When he was young, the world seemed large. Even the small town by the sea where the MacAllister family had lived for generations was a vast and sprawling metropolis, filled with the excitement of fresh bread in the bakery and music in the tavern. He knew the names of all of the streets and the people, and everyone in town knew him and his family. The entire lot of them - and there were a lot, in the crowded little house on the edge of town - had a reputation as good, hardworking people and particularly talented tailors. It was a comfortable, happy existence.   
  
And if Kravitz had stayed that small, the place and his place in it might have been enough for him.

_ He's too much to hold onto, _ his mother would say.  _ He might settle down yet, _ his father would reply, and they would both watch with a mix of pride and despair as their youngest son got into some new trouble or caught at a prank. He was vivacious, and loud, and kind except to those who weren't kind to him. He was smart, and made clever bets that earned him marbles and trinkets from friends and enemies.  _ If the whole family is a flock of sparrows, I think Kravitz is something brighter, _ said his little sister Lorelei, and she was right - and everywhere Kravitz went, he made music.

It started as humming, progressed to whistling and tapping, and ended up with little snatches of songs that he'd heard in the temple or the tavern. The songs to the Raven Queen were sweet, but the ones from the tavern - filled with words Kravitz didn’t know the meaning of and stories Kravitz  _ had better not _ know the meaning of - were more than his mother could put up with for long. She shoved the fiddle his grandfather played at Kravitz, shoved Kravitz at his grandfather, and if the sound of his practiced screeching was unbearable at first no one complained for fear of her wrath.

He considered himself lucky that he already knew what he was destined to do; some people never figure out what they're meant for. From the moment Kravitz gripped the neck of his grandfather's fiddle to pull it from its case, he was certain. It felt right, fit him in a way that the second-hand clothes and the needle and thread never would. When he played, people listened and said that the child was going somewhere in life with a talent like that. With childish optimism, Kravitz couldn't picture a future for himself that wasn't filled with music.

And for a long time, it was.

~~~

There was a freedom in his music that Kravitz didn’t find anywhere else except on the cliffside with Lorelei, while they exchanged funny stories from their day and she sang and weaved a flower crown to place on his head. He could be anyone when he held the instrument and people watched him, enraptured. He could be anyone in her hopeful, optimistic eyes.

“Will you remember us when you’re famous?” She asked, laying down in the swaying wildflowers and grinning at him.

Kravitz rolled his eyes. “As if I could ever forget you.”

No one but her could have stopped him from playing. He would have worked his whole life to make enough money to earn his way to the academy, would have dedicated himself to his craft whether he was destined to succeed or not. He would have played for the world, would have lead orchestras and  _ made _ people listen to him and his music. He knew from childhood what he was destined for.

Only Lorelei was more important than music.

It started quietly - just a cough, and while her family expressed their concern she waved them away, laughing that it was ridiculous to worry over something so small. And no, she was not going to see a doctor about it when there were weddings to plan and more mouths to feed and other expenses that needed paying. They could all stop hovering, she was fine.

After that, everything happened very quickly. The cough intensified. Lorelei could barely keep down food, barely had the strength to help with the family business. When she couldn’t refuse doctor visits anymore, the cost of different faces telling them the same, discouraging message about limited time piled on top of her family. Lorelei didn’t go to the cliffside anymore. She sat by the window and Kravitz brought in flower crowns to place on her head and make her smile.

Sometimes he’d play for her, when she asked. But the fiddle stayed in its case most of the time - artists that had formal training didn’t always make a lot of money, and artists without formal training made less. There would be time for music later, when Lorelei was well and doctor bills were no longer a concern.

One morning, early enough that the sun wasn’t up yet, Kravitz found his sister sitting at the kitchen table. She looked like a ghost in her nightgown, thin and quiet, haunting the space she took instead of filling it. The fiddle was in front of her, safely in its case - she hadn’t touched it. She just looked at it, as though it would answer a question if she studied it hard enough.

Lorelei must have heard him come in. “Kravitz, if I ask you to do something, will you promise to do it?”

He wanted to say he would do anything she asked, but he was afraid. “What is it?”

“Don’t give up your music for me. Don’t… stop living, because of me.”

He didn’t know how to answer her. Kravitz left without saying anything at all, afraid of the request and how much it sounded like giving up.

He would play again, but when Lorelei was well. Not until then.

~~~

Healers of every type, clerics of every deity, every coin their family had to pay for one scrap of hope, came to nothing. Lorelei was worse, almost always in bed. No one in the Raven Queen’s temple was surprised at the lack of the MacAllister family at services - pitying murmurs were exchanged, and townspeople who weren’t sure what else to do brought the family casseroles and condolences. Only a matter of time, most agreed.

It was as if there’d already been a funeral, as if it was already too late. Kravitz hated their knowing kindness. He didn’t need to mourn for someone who was still alive - he needed help.

“A shame about your sister.”

Kravitz was in the tavern. He used to play cards and dice games here, but the prospect was less exciting once he’d lost trust in chance. Instead he was looking for a distraction and had a glass of something that could distract him from everything.

The man next to him was vaguely familiar, someone he’d seen cross through the shop before. A local, and Kravitz did his best not to snap at the man; public pity only forgave a person so much anger. “‘Shame’ doesn’t quite encompass it.”

The man chuckled, and shared that his name was Rett. “A sorry way to start a conversation and I know it, but I know what gets a person’s attention where you are now. I have something to say that I think you’ll want to hear.”

He told Kravitz about his daughter, years dead, and the man who was the cause of it. An accident, and properly punished, Rett confided to him, but a small comfort to hear after his life had fallen apart. "You steal a life and you can't return it," Rett said, voice lowered even in the mostly-empty building. "The only thing to do is for someone to steal it back."

Kravitz spent hours at the tavern that night. The meeting felt like an answer to his prayers, if Kravitz had been in the habit of praying. It was hope, come to seek him out and tell him that he and his family didn't have to bow to death. Rett wasn't the only one, even in their small seaside town; there was a group of people who felt equally abandoned and hopeless.   


And they were just people. That was something Kravitz didn't expect when he agreed to meet the other necromancers; they were mothers and brothers, children and grandparents. Some of them, more than he would have guessed, he recognized. The baker's son was there, and a young woman who used to be a cleric at the temple. A quiet farmer who sold his crop at every farmer's market in town without fail sat quietly in the corner, and a fisherman's wife worked on her knitting while the blacksmith next to her poured over pages of forbidden magic.   


Rett was their leader. He used to keep sheep, and it seemed like a good fit for the man's personality - he was calm and gentle, with a simple way of talking that sounded reasonable and wise. He mediated arguments with untroubled understanding of both sides, and assured his flock that they were doing something just.   


"The gods won't help us with our work," Rett said to an attentive audience, gathered in Marda's kitchen with the only light coming from the candles burning low. "They have a balance to maintain, they insist that not everyone can be saved. And they're right - not everyone can. Only the people here, the people like us, who are willing to defy rules of balance and walk forbidden paths will earn for our families and friends the right to freedom from rules. We make our sacrifices, not for ourselves, but for the ones we love."

Kravitz listened and studied, spending hours of time and entire evenings in a rotation of kitchens, sitting rooms, and barns. He learned horrifying secrets and stared them down until the horror ran dry and he was left with a dull kind of ache in the knowledge he now possessed. He met all of the people their little community was meant to save - the sick, the elderly, the injured, and the dead through the stories their loved ones told about them.  _ This is just, _ he thought.  _ This is kindness. It would be cruel to let good people suffer. _ And Kravitz, who would have excelled at the academy, whose talent would have been recognized in places he'd never heard of, excelled just as well in the study of necromancy.

_ We're losing both of them, all at once, _ his mother would say.  _ He'll find his way back, _ his father would reply. They both tried to speak to him, but he didn't seem to hear them - he was always, always absorbed in some thought that none of them could guess at.  _ Kravitz looks like a ghost, _ said Lorelei, and she was right. The house was so silent, still with waiting.   


When Kravitz was allowed to participate in rituals, he was given proof of his progress etched on his back. He was proud and sick, sitting at the kitchen table in the early hours of the morning. He ached, all the way through. What he was doing was just, and he felt poisoned with it.   


That was where Lorelei found him, struggling down from her bed. Kravitz was hardly home anymore, had no time for flower crowns or for her, and so finding him there was worth a smile. She was quiet when she approached him, but it wouldn't have mattered; Kravitz was somewhere else, and her gentle touch on his back made him flinch violently.

"Are you hurt?" He didn't know how to answer her. "Kravitz, please let me help you. We're worried. I miss you."   


"I miss you too." It's not the first time he wondered if he shouldn't spend more time with her, instead of going to so many meetings. If she was gone before he got home one night, he didn't want his last memory of her to be a glance as he walked out of the door. But if he didn't, who else would save her? "But I need to do this, Lori. I have to."   


"I don't understand what it is you're doing. You don't tell us anything." She reached for his back again, carefully. "You're quiet, when you're here at all. And even then you're not really here."   


"I don't know what to tell you. I'm trying to help you."   


She glanced at his face - still staring at the table, not paying attention - and she reached for the bottom of his shirt. "I am going to help  _ you, _ Kravitz, whether you like it or not."

Lorelei pulled his shirt up before Kravitz could protest, prepared to see cuts, gashes, some sort of injury that she could make a poultice for or send for a healer over. Instead, her brother's back was a complicated design of symbols that she didn't recognize, wouldn't have recognized even if she had hours to study them instead of the few seconds before Kravitz pulled his shirt back down and turned his back away from her.

"Don't --"   


"Kravitz."   


"Don't. Don't tell anyone." 

Lorelei was struck that this is her brother, the one she told all her secrets to, who was looking at her like she had the power to break him. "Kravitz, what are you hiding from us?"

"You don't have to be happy," he said, and he could barely get the words out; he felt like he was drowning in desperation and fear and he didn't know if he was more afraid of death or what was needed to circumvent it, "But don't be sorry. Don't be sad. I'm doing this for you."   


She was crying, and it was another thing that Kravitz couldn't make better for her. "I never asked you to.” When he didn’t answer, she insisted, “I never asked you to! Kravitz, all I want is for you to be happy. Can you understand that? That’s what would make me happy.” And then, quieter: “Whatever happened to your music? Your dreams? You never play for me anymore. Where  _ are _ you, Kravitz?"   


It was quiet. He couldn’t look at her, and he heard the soft sound of her footsteps - first to come closer and kiss his forehead, and then up the stairs to her room. Kravitz realized, maybe for the first time or maybe the thousandth, that saving his sister and making her happy were entirely different things. He couldn't do both.   


~~~

In the end, he couldn't do either. 

He was handed a knife. The ritual was straightforward, Rett explained while Kravitz stared past him to an unfamiliar face in the barn. One in exchange for the other. As simple as necromancy ever is. He sounded just like a shepherd, calming a nervous sheep that's drifting from the flock for fear of a threat that looks much worse than it is. Kravitz looked at him, and back at the child chained up in the corner   


"A life for a life," Rett said. "Nothing could be simpler."   


_ Nothing could be simpler. _ Kravitz stood over the child, the circles and symbols of the ritual already etched onto the ground and onto his back. He felt too powerful. He felt too helpless. This decision was never what Kravitz was meant for. He didn’t know how anyone, any single person with a beating heart, could make this decision.

He made a different choice. It was simple - a life for a life, exactly as he’d been taught.

Kravitz was halfway home when he couldn’t go any farther. He hurt too much to move. A trail of blood marked his path, and as his footsteps slowed and stopped, he knew with sudden certainty he wouldn’t make it home. He wouldn’t outlive Lorelei, even as sick as she was. He started to laugh, there on the streets he’d known his whole life, and tears streamed down his face. He sat down on the stone step of the temple clutched his side. She’d never forgive him for not saying goodbye.

“Kravitz MacAllister, it has been a long time since I have seen you at my doorstep.”

The voice was rich and resonating, but not unkind. Kravitz looked up to see a woman standing above him. There were feathers in her hair and he cloak was darker than the night around them. He couldn’t see her face - it was clearly visible in front of him, but the longer he looked the more sure he was that there wasn’t one face before him, but many - shifting features that did not do the lady justice - and he wondered if that was the fault of the blood loss.

“I’m sorry,” Kravitz struggled to say. “I’m afraid I don’t recognize you.”

She smiled. “You used to sing for me. But it has been many years since then.” She reached out and rested her hand lightly on his back. It burned, worse than when the ink was put there, and Kravitz flinched. “You did not have this when you sang for me.”

“I made a mistake.” No, that wasn’t it. “I made… many mistakes, or the same one many times.”

The woman stroked his back, and the pain subsided. “But you’ve learned now. It’s never too late to do better, child.”

Kravitz laughed, but it came out choking with blood on his tongue. “I’m going to  _ die. _ ”

“You are,” she agreed, and she didn’t sound particularly upset at the thought. “But I’m not here to save you from death. I think you’ve done enough running from me by now, Kravitz.”

The Raven Queen. Kravitz closed his eyes. An appropriate place to meet death, here at the foot of her temple. “Then you’re here to punish me.”

“I’m here to offer you the second chance you offered someone else. You will have the chance to do better, if you accept my price.”

Kravitz - who could have been an artist, and was a necromancer, and would be a reaper - accepted Death’s offer.

~~~

He was dying in the streets outside. He was standing before the throne of the Raven Queen’s court. He was there, in Lorelei’s room while she woke from a peaceful sleep to confusion.

“Kravitz? What happened?”

He didn’t know how to start. There was too much to explain, so  _ much _ to apologize for. She still looked at him like he could be anything, and he didn’t deserve it. “I’m  _ so sorry, _ Lori.”

Confusion turned to concern. “Krav, what’s wrong? Do you need help?”

“No,” he said. No one would find him until morning, his body already cold on the stair. He didn’t need any help his family could give anymore. Kravitz stepped closer to her and brushed back braids from her face that he used to help her with, aware that he must have already been too cold to be comfortable. He’d wasted so much time. “I’ve made so many mistakes, but I’m going to fix them now. I’m going to do better, I promise. And I love you. No matter what, Lorelei.”

“I love you too.” Her eyes were wide. She was moments away from tears and even though neither of them said so, she must have realized that this was a goodbye. “Will you play for me?”

His queen was calling to him; he could feel the tug in his chest and in his mind. The lines of the tattoo on his back shifted, reclaimed. There wasn’t time. “Not tonight, Lori,” he whispered, leaning to kiss her forehead. “But maybe tomorrow, okay?” He couldn’t remember his last name. He couldn’t remember the room they were in. The price, taking hold - when his debt to his queen was paid, his memory would be returned to him. “I’ll play for you soon.”

When he turned away, he couldn’t have said who he’d been talking to. The only thing left was a longing for music.


End file.
